Jon wasn’t the type to worry needlessly. But with the way things could go in a small town, one always felt their back going up slightly at the approach of so many strangers.

The Roma. They were good enough people. He knew this intellectually. However, his small world always seemed a bit more restricted and fearful when that many new and foreign faces swept past his house, dark as shadows with teeth laughing so whitely. They didn’t follow the same rules he did. They didn’t act the way he did. They were wild, reckless, singing loudly, drinking and carousing about their camps. They were easy enough scapegoats for whatever ills happened to befall his farm. He’d lost a cow last time they’d come through. Oh - not this troupe, but another. Lisa had screamed long and loud at him after his tirade about them damn Romas.

She’d been right of course. Once daylight struck soundly in the face of the earth below it and tracks could be made out, wolves or feral dogs were to blame. It was this shame and the loss of his Lisa in the itinerant months that kept him from going out of his front door, waving a pitch fork at them and screaming for them to go home, go back to where they’d come from.

Jon wasn’t alone in feeling the uncertainty of the Roma invasion. Still, there was good to be had here. Trade happened and dance, news and music. Color, color, more color. The drab little town made up for its lacks in the extravagant gardens before each pale little house. But the Romas burst in like flowers alive and uprooted.

It delighted the younger set. It made the older set wistful. And it only outwardly terrified a few. Still - they were careful when counting change. They considered twice any animal they bought from the Roma caravan. They locked their barn doors and barred windows closed despite the muggy weight of the air.

Jon went to get his old plough horse out from the field. His was the first house they’d hit upon the road coming into the village. He didn’t want the old fool (the horse, not himself) to kick up his heels and try and dance with the Roma’s beasts. That only tended to deliver bruised cannons and pulled shoulders. He needed the damn beast to be ready to work the next day. He couldn’t afford frivolity.

__________________

‘What will my death be like?’ he thought- and knew at once
with abrupt certainty, that it would be just like his life:
... the same balance of bearables.
~Amis